Blogging Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Bruce Clay, Inc. Blog

I’ve been carrying around a dirty little secret for a while now that I must confess: I barely read or comment on anyone else’s blog unless I’m looking for information for my own post.

*Ducking as tomatoes fly*

I have a 90-pound monkey of guilt on my shoulders that I know won’t scatter until I start being more social and helpful, not just to our readers, but also to the Digital marketing and blogging community as a whole.

First, let me tell you about some ideas I had on how to build community through a blog, and then I would love feedback on what’s worked for you.

The advice that business should blog is great and all, but the more pressing question, by far, is how. When I’ve sat down with clients to start them on the track to business blogging, there are many questions and much uncertainty, of the creative and technical nature. As the author of a search engine marketing blog, it’s kinda my thing to think about both sides of the coin: the SEO benefit as well as the creative and community building aspects of blogging. Here are some things to keep in mind if you’re staring at a sparse screen, looking to leverage the benefits of a blog.

No one ever said it was easy to blog every day. But as we know, nothing good in life comes easy. And so everyday, we at Bruce Clay, Inc. strive to say something meaningful on the blog. The benefits of blogging for your brand and for SEO have been extolled before. But less examined are the risks of not blogging. What are you missing out on by not blogging regularly? It’s not a test we’re likely to undertake here, so luckily, social media blogger Justin Kownacki did the deed for us. But look out. The results aren’t pretty.

For the last three months, Justin has blogged weekly instead of daily. His goal was to improve the quality of the blog by devoting more time to each high impact post rather than spreading his efforts across multiple posts. It’s a theory I’ve been tempted with before. But now the evidence is clear. Nobody wins — not the author, not the brand, and least of all your SEO efforts — when you cut back on the blogging.

On today’s episode of SEM Synergy, guest Lisa Barone joined us on the show. If you read the BCI blog before September of ’08, you know The Lisa from these very pages. There’s also a chance you know her as the blogger kicking butt and chief branding officer of the marketing company she co-founded, Outspoken Media.

During what I’ll loosely call our interview (i.e. happy hour at Yolanda’s Mexican Restaurant), Lisa touches on the need for writers to overcome any lingering aversion to self promotion. Because, as she explains, promotion is the difference between awesome content and awesome content that people read. It’s a topic she tackles is greater detail on the Outspoken Media blog, where she writes:

Oh happy, glorious, liberating Friday. We’re so glad you’ve come back! What’s in store for the recap today? We must read on to find out!

The biggest, brightest full moon of the year happens tonight. Tonight’s full moon also happens to be the first of the year, an event known as the wolf moon. If you’ve got clear skies, celebrate by snatching your three wolf moon shirt from the closet and check out this celestial beauty.

Before voting closes tonight, take a minute to vote for your favorite finalists of the SEMMY Awards. The SEMMYS honors the best Digital marketing blog posts of the year as chosen by the community. Congrats to all the finalists on this distinction! If you’re not really one to pick favorites, you’ll still enjoy the SEMMYS for pulling together and categorizing a ton of incredible posts from the last year.

It’s Monday and my feed reader and e-mail inbox are overflowing. (I bet this sounds familiar!) It was enough for me to reinstitute a feature on the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog from before my time: the SEO Weekend Update. Here’s the search news from over the weekend and today.

Enhanced Rich Snippets and Highlighted Answers in Google Results

Google has announced two enhancements to search results through Rich Snippets and Google Squared technologies. The first is a new Rich Snippets format for events, allowing webmasters to identify pages with events through a standard, engine-friendly format. The second uses structured data to deliver “answer highlighting,” seen in search results as boldface text that answers a user’s query.

HQ Hours of Operation:
8:30am to 5:30 pm Pacific timeDays of Operation:
Monday through Friday – email works other times in many casesSupport Operations:
M-F 9:00 to 5:00 Email Support FormTraining Facility:
Please see the training facility map